Thursday, April 05, 2012

One thing that never fails to entertain me about wingnut screeds is how easy they are to debunk with barely a minimum of effort. Case in point: The Christian-Right group Family Research Institute has released a newsletter wherein it claims, for starters, that the promotion of gay rights has “doomed” Canada by critically reducing its birth rate:

Like frogs in a kettle being slowly boiled to death, FRI frequently hears people — including those concerned about our cultural decline — suggest that the progress of gay rights is not worth a great deal of worry. After all, ‘the sky is not falling. The sun will always come up tomorrow.’ But no matter how ‘big’ or ‘small’ the crisis seems at the moment, the goal of proper social policy is to assure a future for society. As the birth rates of Western countries continue to fall, those who have supported gay rights seem oblivious to the contribution such ‘rights’ make to the decline. Even those who have ‘tolerated’ (or not vigorously opposed) gay rights do not seem to understand the implications.

But now the sky is starting to fall. From Xtra, a gay magazine in Vancouver, comes this:

“the gay rights movement is shifting norms in Canada. And with that comes a message to those who won’t evolve: your outdated morals are no longer acceptable, and we will teach your kids the new norm.” (10/20/11)

Notice one thing that’s missing in all that talk about how gay rights have “implications”: any shred of evidence, or even a half-assed explanation, about what treating gays and lesbians equally has to do with heterosexual couples making less babies. What, does all that gay love in the air just kill straight people’s sex drives? Are these newly liberated homosexuals running around stealing ovaries? Honestly, if you’re going to claim that two things are related, a first step is to at least attempt to describe what that relation even is.

But all that is just secondary to the actual evidence, which – either predictably or shockingly enough – completely undermines the FRI's hysterical pronouncement. Yes, Canada does have a relatively low fertility rate of 1.67 (2009). And yet, Canucks are still booming at a steady pace, even though the low birth rates haven’t changed much in forty years. You’d expect that fertility rates low enough to “doom” a nation would have made a dent in its population after four decades. Funny, that.

In addition, the United States’s own birth rate is also rather low at 2.05 (2009), only 0.38 higher from its supposedly “doomed” northern neighbor. This would seem to indicate that it isn’t faring all that better, is it? Are gay rights also to blame for the U.S.’s own apparently impending demise?

Finally, as Right Wing Watchpoints out, even some countries where homosexuality is brutally oppressed also have low birth rates, such as Iran, which only has 1.7 births per woman (2009) despite regularly putting gay people to death. But maybe that’s also an example of a dangerous promotion of LGBT equality – after all, there are still gays and lesbians in that country who haven’t been slaughtered yet! Surely, the gays are responsible for the Islamic Republic’s declining birth rates somehow? (After all, if there’s one thing we’ve learned, it’s that it’s alwaysthe gays’ fault.)

Nicole (l) and Jonas Maines (r)

Apparently getting bored with merely attacking gays, the FRI then throws some barbs at their next logical victims: LGBT children and their enabling parents:

Led By The Child Who Simply Knew
That was the headline on the front page of the Boston Globe December 11, 2011. Consider the subhead:

“The twin boys were identical in every way but one. Wyatt was a girl to the core, and now lives as one, with the help of a brave, loving family and a path-breaking doctor’s care”

The Boston Globe serves one of the most educated populations of the U.S. — think Harvard, MIT, etc. Do these sophisticated folk want to be “led by a child?” Would they disrupt the lives of ‘regular kids’ to cater to a confused 4 year-old? Would they accept ‘as gospel’ the decisions of a program that started in 2007? Indeed, yes!

In one of the more incredible stories of subordination to the notion that ‘children know best,’ the same individuals, who denounce as ‘primitive’ beliefs statements such as ‘God created the world,’ disrupt society to cater to the whims of a 4 year-old!

Wait – I read that article (linking to it in a Daily Blend post last December), and all I saw was the bittersweet and ultimately heartwarming tale of a child who knew she was different from the start and was lucky enough to find comfort and support in her family and medical professionals as she became the person she was meant to be. How does any of that translate to “disrupt[ing] the lives of ‘regular kids’”, or anyone at all? They’re not demanding that society embrace young Nicole and her decisions; merely that they not discriminate against her for being who and what she is. Which, of course, is exactly what these bigoted assholes at the FRI are complaining about. True class acts, wot.

But that’s not all:

This madness is coming to your community. Who would ever have thought we would be ruled by children (and homosexuals)? Who could have imagined that the rights of normal kids and their parents would be trumped by the ‘rights’ of the sexually disturbed?

In the Loonisphere, trying to protect a child from bigotry and discrimination based on her gender identity is equal to letting society crumble and crushing “normal kids and their parents” under the jackboots of “sexually disturbed” children and homosexuals.

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About Me

I’m a liberal skeptic, rationalist & third-wave atheist stuck in a rut in Québec, Canada and who spends his time composing, writing, drawing, harboring a layman’s passion for science and technology, getting angry at social injustices, and most of all, jabbing cretins and trolls with sharp pointy sticks. (Oh, and blogging.) Proud owner of a Nize Hat!, an indomitable SIWOTI syndrome and an itchy snark finger.

You can find all my musical, literary and artistic works at my art blog, Creativitas.